It is desirable for advertisers and businesses to understand what advertisements are generating engagement with customers. More specifically, when a customer makes a phone call to a business, it is desirable to know if a prior customer engagement with a particular source (e.g., billboard, online ad, newspaper ad, etc.) resulted in the phone call. Call tracking systems may be utilized for correlating customer engagement to phone calls. The simplest technique for tracking customer engagements that result in phone calls is to designate a distinct phone number for each advertiser and source. However, when a significant number of advertisers and sources are involved, requiring a separate phone number for each advertiser/source combination can be costly and require significant operational work (e.g., for securing phone numbers to match each area, etc.).
A prior call tracking system which attempts to reduce costs by recycling telephone numbers is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,424,442. The '442 patent discloses a method for providing pay-per-call performance based advertising. In accordance with the method, a telephone number is dynamically allocated to an advertisement on a just-in-time basis, and if the telephone number is not displayed or called for predefined periods of time, then the telephone number is unallocated and recycled. Telephone numbers may be recycled based on the time of last display in order to reduce potential confusion (i.e., the oldest telephone numbers that have not been displayed for the longest amount of time are utilized first).
While the techniques of the '442 patent for recycling phone numbers provide certain advantages, a significant amount of phone numbers may still be required by the system. As noted above, each additional phone number adds cost to the system. Moreover, other operational problems may also arise. For example, each additional phone number that is utilized by the call tracking system increases the likelihood that a spam call or a misdial will occur. Each spam call or misdial distorts the data that the call tracking system is collecting, and results in the call attribution functions of the call tracking system being less accurate.
The need exists for systems and methods that overcome the above problems, as well as provide additional benefits. Overall, the examples herein of some prior or related systems and their associated limitations are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of existing or prior systems will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon reading the following Detailed Description.